Saskatchewan Marijuana Party Officially Registered

By
The Globe and Mail
on June 9, 2006

The Saskatchewan Marijuana Party has joined six other parties as an officially registered provincial political party with Elections Saskatchewan. Like other marijuana parties in the country, it is expected to advocate the legalization of possession and cultivation of cannabis. But Saskatchewan Marijuana Party leaders aren’t talking right now.
President Ethan Erkiletian said the party won’t make an official statement until June 20. The timing is related to the June 19 Weyburn-Big Muddy by-election, although the party does not and can not have a candidate in that race.

The party’s leader is Nathan Holowaty, a Saskatoon pot activist who formerly was president of the NDP campus club at the University of Saskatchewan. A December, 2004, article in the Sheaf campus newspaper said the Saskatchewan Marijuana Party was being formed in part because the provincial justice system took a punitive approach toward marijuana.

It says the party’s formation was given impetus by the March, 2004, arrest and incarceration of British Columbia marijuana activist Marc Emery in Saskatoon for passing a joint in Kiwanis Park. Mr. Emery, the leader of the B.C. Marijuana Party, said upon his release from jail in October, 2004, that a marijuana party would be established in Saskatchewan that would field a full slate of candidates in the next provincial election.

The Marijuana Party joins the NDP, Saskatchewan Party, Liberals, Progressive Conservatives, Green Party and Western Independence Party on the provincial registry.